Sunday 29 November 2009 19.51 EST
First published on Sunday 29 November 2009 19.51 EST

Iran almost certainly does not have the capacity at the moment to build 10 new uranium enrichment plants, full of next-generation centrifuges which have yet to be properly tested - but that is beside the point.

This was intended to be theatre. It is a shrug of the shoulders of pantomime proportions in response to Friday's vote at the IAEA board in Vienna to rebuke Iran over its newly discovered Qom plant and refer the country once more to the UN Security Council.

The pattern is familiar. In February 2006, the last time the IAEA board of governors referred Iran to the Security Council, Iran radically cut back its cooperation with the agency to the bare minimum, and ploughed ahead with enrichment. A few weeks later, Ahmadinejad announced Iranian scientists had succeeded in enriching uranium for the first time.

The message is equally clear now: We really do not appreciate being referred to the Security Council for activities we believe are within our rights, and if you do so, it will be worse for you.

At the moment, Iran can produce about a metric tonne of low-enriched uranium a year - not very much in terms of generating power, but a significant quantity if building bombs is your thing. If further enriched, it is getting towards enough for a single bomb. When the one tonne threshold was crossed earlier in February, it stirred quite a fuss. Now, Ahmadinejad is talking about enriching 300 tonnes a year.

In doing so, the Iranian president has sent some strong signals in all directions. In terms of Iranian politics, this shows new resolve. Flirting with the US, France and Russia over a uranium export deal in October got Ahmadinejad into trouble at home. His critics were able to outflank him on the right, accusing him of bargaining away Iran's hard-earned achievements. This suggests the president has no intention of making the same mistake again.

As for the global politics of this move, Ahmadinejad has taken the last scrap of political cover away from his country's usual defenders on the Security Council, Russia and China. This is an invitation for more sanctions, and an embrace of a looming new crisis. A crisis may be just what he needs to solidify his rule in the post-election turmoil.

It will be taken by Barack Obama's critics in the US as proof the 'extended hand' policy has backfired. That makes it harder for the US president to push his disarmament agenda in the Pentagon and in Congress. All of this is very bad news for next May's NPT Review Conference, widely seen as the last good chance to save the struggling non proliferation regime.Update: Arms Control Wonk has an interesting take on the ten plants story. Joshua Pollack points out that Iranian statements suggests that five of the sites had already been selected, which means work of some sort was already underway. Given Iran's definition of when it is obliged to report work on nuclear sites to the IAEA, construction may even have begun. Pollack argues the ten plants announcement is perhaps Tehran's attempt to pre-empt more revelations about its parallel nuclear programme.

Pollack writes: "Viewed in this light, Iran's "defiant" disclosure might be a voluntary foreclosure of its ability — probably already compromised — to use a network of covert sites to build the Bomb. If that's so, then intelligence has secured some of the margin of security that negotiations seemingly could not."